Bengaluru property taxes may go up 20%; proposal to be placed before government today

Sep 03, 2015

Source : ET

BENGALURU: The BBMP is proposing a 20 per cent raise in property taxes to cover the large gap in its revenues and expenditure. The civic body will send the proposal to the government on Thursday. "We are proposing the revision effective from April 1, 2016," BBMP Administrator TM Vijay Bhaskar told ET. He added that the property taxes in the City have not been revised since 2008 when the civic body introduced a self-assessment scheme for property taxes.

An estimated six lakh properties come under the civic body's limits and the BBMP earned Rs 1,650 crore in property tax collections in 2014-15. BBMP officials and prominent Bengalureans have voiced concern that several properties worth crores in market value have been paying a few thousand rupees each in taxes and this should be corrected.

Biocon founder and BPAC president Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said that in a city where you need to invest in creating high-end infrastructure, you cannot have a low property tax. "We should not be cynical. We must first pay the right taxes and then demand service from BBMP ," she said. In the previous BJP regime, the BBMP's Finance Standing Committee had recommended a 25 per cent raise in property taxes but the BBMP Council did not take a decision on that proposal. Hence, it never moved forward.

This time, the BBMP Administrator's proposal will go to the Urban Development department.

BBMP officials say most of the properties within the city limits have been covered under the tax net. Those suspected to be evading the taxes are mostly on the city outskirts. They added that the BBMP's revenues will go up significantly -about Rs 600 crore -if the civic body is allowed to regularise the buildings that have come up on farmlands.

Latest Realty News

BENGALURU: A city-based real estate developer has filed a case of cheating against the Bengaluru Urban deputy commissioner and four of his predecessors for allegedly selling him over 7 acres of government land through an open tender in 2007 by not revealing that the land consisted of a burial ground.

MUMBAI: The central government, through a crucial amendment, has included real estate agents in the Central Advisory Council that will help the government understand issues related to the real estate sector.

KOLKATA: Kolkata based BGA Realtors is looking to build 1.5 million sq ft of affordable housing space across Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Assam Jharkhand, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh said a top company of ficial.

The union government on Thursday released the list of 98 cities that will be developed under the Smart Cities mission. These cities together have a population of 13 crore, accounting for 35 per cent of India’s urban population.

NOIDA: After a decade labouring on building sites around New Delhi Akhilesh Kumar lost his scaffolding job last month when his employer halted work on an array of 30 residential towers.
He joins more than half a million workers let go from sites around India's capital in the last 18 months, in a stark sign that the ground reality in Asia's third-largest economy is far from as rosy as official data suggests.

NEW DELHI: India's tallest commercial building is set to come up in Mumbai, with the Nitin Gadkari-led Ministry of Shipping proposing to construct a towering 'business district' on Mumbai Port Trust land to monetise the asset and ease the space crunch in the country's financial capital. "It will be a 130-storey building and will house mostly offices along with other amenities. We are working on the plan and it's still in initial stages," Gadkari told ET.

MUMBAI: Average transacted office lease sizes across Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Pune have increased from the uncertain times seen in 1Q14 - prior to the general elections, global property consultant JLL India said on Tuesday.
"Market morale was low in 1Q14, which could explain the lower sizes. Following elections in May 2014, however, market sentiment improved gradually, while Mumbai, for example, witnessed 65% appreciation in average deal sizes between 2Q14 and 2Q15," it said.

CHENNAI: Justice R Reghupathi commission of inquiry that probed collapse of an 11-storey building at Moulivakkam last year said the other surviving building at the site resembled the ill-fated block "in terms of all short-falls and deviations that contributed to the mishap". The soil is loose, sandy and watery and pile foundations were not laid for a depth of 18 metres. On the reason for the collapse of the building, the report said it was built primarily with a raft foundation and pillars were